Y: It’s a release of tracks that don’t appear on any of my 14 official studio albums: a few actual rarities like 'Pac-Man,' a couple things that haven’t been released anywhere, a few alternate tracks. There’s an instrumental version of something and a karaoke version of something. So, it’s just like odds and ends, basically, but stuff that we thought that fans would be interested in, and stuff that certainly should be included on any kind of comprehensive box set. It goes from 1978 to this year, and we have the tracks chronologically ordered."

That was an interesting story about Pac-Man (I would have thought there'd be a Pac-Man thread with recent active discussion after that article, but looking in the "unreleased" folder, I don't see any Pac-Man threads; there's probably one and I just wasn't looking too hard). So the Beatles sent a cease-and-detist letter to Dr. Demento over a parody? That's odd, as parodies are fair use (were parodies fair use back then? I have read of other old cases where people were sued, threatened lawsuits, or similar things over parodies). Of course Sesame Street was also sued over its Letter B parody at one point (only for the charges to be dropped thanks to Michael Jackson buying the rights to Let It Be), so perhaps the Beatles or their labels were lawsuit-heavy. So I guess that's why it wasn't on the first album (I thought I've seen Bermuda post something about Al wanting to release it early on but that the Beatles weren't very happy at the time due to John Lennon's death).

And did Al really only need permission from George Harrison, as the article implies? I'd think he'd need permission from all of the Beatles (and their estates).

weird user wrote:That was an interesting story about Pac-Man (I would have thought there'd be a Pac-Man thread with recent active discussion after that article, but looking in the "unreleased" folder, I don't see any Pac-Man threads; there's probably one and I just wasn't looking too hard). So the Beatles sent a cease-and-detist letter to Dr. Demento over a parody? That's odd, as parodies are fair use (were parodies fair use back then? I have read of other old cases where people were sued, threatened lawsuits, or similar things over parodies). Of course Sesame Street was also sued over its Letter B parody at one point (only for the charges to be dropped thanks to Michael Jackson buying the rights to Let It Be), so perhaps the Beatles or their labels were lawsuit-heavy. So I guess that's why it wasn't on the first album (I thought I've seen Bermuda post something about Al wanting to release it early on but that the Beatles weren't very happy at the time due to John Lennon's death).

And did Al really only need permission from George Harrison, as the article implies? I'd think he'd need permission from all of the Beatles (and their estates).

The Supreme Court case that definitively ruled that parody is fair use was Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., which happened in 1994, so this was well before the legality was clear. There's also the added wrinkled that you could argue "Pac-Man" isn't a parody of "Taxman", but rather a satire, and satire is not protected by fair use. But that's moot at this point, given that Harrison's state has allowed it to be released.

From the interview, it sounds like Al speculates some suit working at the Beatles' label just sent out cease-and-desist letters to any and all 'unauthorized' uses of Beatles material. He seems to think Harrison may have never heard the spoof to begin with.